That one time they met
by FFabeonG
Summary: Just a quick one-shot on what happens when the young Sherlock Holmes decides to run from Mycroft and who he happens to meet...


The Time they Met

"Sherlock! Come back here now!" -seventeen-year-old Mycroft Holmes yelled down the street.

"No!" Sherlock Holmes, his younger brother by seven years called without looking over his shoulder as he dodged into and through the crowd of boys his age or older swarming from their private school at the end of the day. Both the Holmes boys, obviously, didn't go to school; they had their own private tutors who often struggled to keep the two highly intelligent boys under some form of disciplined control. But now their lessons had finished and Mycroft was already regretting his agreement to take Sherlock into the market, especially since the ten-year-old had just run away from him.

Grinning, the younger Holmes darted down the narrow alleyway towards the park, glancing back to see his taller and slightly portly brother chasing after him. With a rare giggle, Sherlock Holmes dashed into the nearly deserted park, and in fact the only reason he noticed the other person there was that he nearly knocked him over. The boy's books spilled onto the ground as he stumbled and Holmes found himself skidding to a halt, turning back to the boy, who he saw was about the same age as him.

"Sorry." Holmes said awkwardly.

"It's no problem." The boy reassured him, picking the books up. He was quite tall and skinny, yet he held himself upright with the air of someone with military ancestry, and his hair was a dark reddish-brown. Holmes picked up another of the books that had fallen nearby and handed it back to the boy, who said, "Thank you. Who were you running from then?"

"My brother Mycroft." The corner of Holmes' mouth twitched as he said that. "I had better keep running though, or else he will find me!"

"Wait!" the boy suddenly stopped Holmes from bolting again, and there was something of a mischievous glint in his green eyes. "You are aware of the hiding place just in the trees here, aren't you?"

"In the trees?" Holmes blinked. "But how- where?"

Now the boy grinned properly, and left his books on a bench before showing Holmes to an ordinary-looking oak. Then he loosened his sleeve cuffs, rolled them back, and with instructions for Holmes to follow, began to climb. He seemed to know exactly where to put his feet in order to scale the almost smooth bark and Holmes could only follow by putting his own feet in exactly the same spots until they came to about the third branch up, which was sheltered by heavy amounts of leaves all around them. "Here," the boy explained "we can see out and all around the park, but practically no-one can see us."

"Wonderful!" Holmes chuckled slightly, his gaze directed through the trees before sliding back to his companion. "Does _your_ brother know you are here?"

"H-how do you know I have a brother?!" the boy's mouth fell open in surprise. Holmes smirked slightly, not upset at the excuse to show off his prowess.

"When you rolled your sleeves up, I observed the letters J.W written with a quill pen on the inside of your left sleeve cuff, but the J had obviously been written over another letter. Now, seeing as no mother would get the first letter of her son's name wrong, and it is mostly common for clothes to be handed down brother to brother, it is obvious that an older brother of yours owned that shirt, and was very careless with it." He explained with an air of laziness.

"How did you know my brother is careless as well? It is as true as daylight, but I cannot understand how you knew it!" the boy looked enthralled by Holmes' deductions.

"Easily enough!" Holmes replied "Just in this light, the lines of rips along the collar, carefully stitched back together, are plainly visible, and I can tell that you yourself are not careless, so therefore they must have come from the previous owner of the shirt!"

"You have some sort of angel in your mind!" the boy laughed "Everything you have said about me and my family is true. Mother always scolds Harold for not being as careful as me, and she takes such pains to mend all the damage he does so that it may not be seen! And you see all that from the collar and cuffs of my shirt!"

"It is elementary, really." Holmes liked this boy, he wasn't going to deny that. Just then, an unfamiliar voice reached his ears, calling. Holmes' companion however, sighed at the sound.

"And as if on cue, there is Harold himself." He shook his head "I must go, and your brother will probably be worried himself."

"Oh he won't be." Holmes shook his head as the boy climbed down and he followed. A figure had appeared in the park gates, waving and beckoning, and the boy yelled over to his brother as he picked up his books from the bench,

"I'm coming!"

"By the way," Holmes called after him as he began to leave, "What is your name?"

"John Watson!" the boy called back with a grin "And you?"

"Sherlock Holmes!" Holmes waved goodbye before turning to see his own brother running up to him, red-faced and looking as though he had a few choice words to say to his little brother.


End file.
